It’s Been a Dismal Decade for the Disabled : Rights: The ‘80s began with a special salute to the physically handicapped. Almost 10 years later, they are prime targets of government budget cutbacks.

On Nov. 15, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David M. Schacter threw out a jury’s award to a physically and mentally disabled woman. She’d become pregnant after having been raped, given an abortion and then sterilized--all while at Laurelwood Convalescent Hospital, owned by Western Medical Enterprises, in North Hollywood.

“There was no basis for the jury’s finding other than mere speculation, sympathy or compassion,” ruled the judge, since no evidence that the woman knew she had been raped was presented.

The issue, however, is not whether the woman was aware of what had happened to her. Instead, it is what we should do about her victimization. We remove our dead from battlefields not because they can still feel but because we do. Should we treat living disabled people less honorably?

Are people who are already disabled entitled to little or no monetary damages for suffering an additional disability? I remember a doctor casually telling me, after I had broken my legs on an unsafe ramp, “After all, you were in a wheelchair already.” His able-bodied mentality assumed that my legs were worthless just because he would not want them. I also remember a lawyer explaining that any damages awarded to me would be limited, since I had no job. The interruption in my unpaid activities for civil rights for the disabled did not count.

As bad as Judge Schacter’s decision was, a far worse one was handed down on Nov. 21. The Georgia Supreme Court ruled that a young quadriplegic can get help to commit suicide, a “constitutional right” not enjoyed by the able-bodied. Last summer, a disabled Michigan youth took advantage of his special right to die by disconnecting his respirator. He wanted home care, at a monthly cost of $400, but the government would only pay for a $6,000-a-month nursing home.

Why have the lives of disabled people become so discounted, especially when the 1980s began with the Declaration of the International Year of the Disabled? The disabled are only the most vulnerable victims of a decade in which economic power emerged as an absolute good. Money went where money was, and it wasn’t with the disabled.

Ruthless cost-cutting programs were implemented. Hundreds of thousands of poor, disabled people were cut off from Social Security disability income or automatically rejected when applying for it, regardless of the severity of their disabilities. Medical-aid recipients were forced to endure rejections by doctors and reductions in coverage. Power wheelchairs for the severely disabled were prime targets.

The few remaining laws providing for disability rights and services were rarely enforced, since legal aid was defunded. Equal access to regular transportation nationwide was nullified, along with access to higher education and equal employment. Ombudsmen programs to protect disabled clients from the injustices of the state departments of vocational rehabilitation were short-circuited by right-wing appointees, with the severely physically disabled going unserved.

As a result, disabled unemployment increased 13% in eight years, to more than 76% for men. Disabled women stayed at 87% unemployment. Compensation dropped sharply.

A recent new photo captured the essence of disabled assistance programs in the ‘80s. A proud Michigan doctor, Jack Kevorkian shows off his invention, an IV bottle rack that “allows terminally ill or severely crippled patients (italics mine) to commit suicide with a drug that kills within four minutes.” The device is “humane and painless,” said the doctor.

America’s able-bodied power structure denies the connection between disabled unemployment, poverty, homelessness, warehousing and the desire to die. Better to imply that cripples naturally hate their lives and thus crave death.

Only a rebirth of the American spirit of decency can reverse such attitudes. Along with this, the idea that some people are much more equal than others must be defeated. Otherwise, trumpeted panaceas like the Americans with Disabilities Act, passed by the U.S. Senate, become worse than irrelevant. Our freedom will be limited to choosing between instant oblivion and daily atrocities.